A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

Evidence from Thee, but Not from Me

[In the National Health Service,] something important is quietly dying. I don’t think it is too fanciful to call it the spirit of medical professionalism. And we, the medical profession, are watching it die….

[F]ar from being privatised, medicine in England has become ever more a creature of the state….

[A]lthough medicine has embraced the need for evidence-based medicine, policy making remains largely an evidence-free zone.

Politicians consolidating and centralizing power…government sucking the soul out of a profession…ho-hum. It was the last line that really caught my attention.

I’ve noticed the same tendency on this side of the pond. For example, policymakers such as Sen. Chuck Grassley, Rep. Nancy Johnson, and the Institute of Medicine want Medicare to cook up “pay-for-performance” financial incentives that reward providers who deliver what the evidence suggests is “quality” care. You know, pay them to follow the evidence. As Forrest Gump might say, that’s a fine idea. The only problem is, private insurers have been trying that idea for 10 years, and there’s scant evidence to show that it actually works.

Personally, I think “P4P” has the potential to do a lot of good. But in a recent paper on the topic, I had to note the irony:

The P4P movement proceeds from two premises: first, that clinicians tend to underuse evidence from randomized clinical trials and, second, that financial incentives can increase such use and improve the quality of care. Yet whatever enthusiasm exists for P4P is not derived from the type of evidence of effectiveness that P4P enthusiasts believe should guide clinical practice. Third-party financial incentives remain an unproven tool for improving health care quality at all, let alone in a cost-effective manner.